Why Are You Doing THAT Exercise??

Have you ever looked at your fitness routine and asked yourself, why am I doing this exercise. There is one exercise that is prevalent in most pregnancy fitness routines and I hate it. It follows the fitness pregnancy guidelines so it must be safe, right. Yes it is safe, but is it relevant. The shoulder dumbbell lateral raise, this is great because all pregnant women want ripped shoulder and big delts-haahaahaa. I view this exercise as a routine filler, in actual fact due to breast enlargement causing tight pectoral muscles your shoulder rotator cuff muscles become weak and over stretched. Performing a shoulder lateral raise for your deltoid muscles will inhibit the use of your rotator cuff muscles even further. So what, what do this mean to you, well you still have nice shoulders-rotator cuff weakness can lead to neck and shoulder pain, headaches and is the beginning of shoulder dysfunction.

So if you are performing a dumbbell shoulder lateral raise during your pregnancy, please stop and substitute this with shoulder rotations.

example of wall shoulder rotation to help you keep neutral spine